I have finished all of my grading for the semester and submitted my grades. I am feeling the unbearable lightness of being. I’m especially feeling it since I now don’t have to grade anything for about 9 months. I’m on leave for the Spring 2007 semester, so I may not even set foot in a classroom until next August. Unless I have a meeting in a classroom.

For those of you in my beloved audience unfamiliar with the tenure process, here’s the deal. Every junior faculty member in SILS gets a semester leave prior to submitting our tenure portfolio. This may be a university policy, I don’t actually know. In fact, all 3 of us juniors who started together are taking our leaves next semester. Clearly, great minds think alike. We can schedule this leave at any time pre-tenure, and I tried to be as strategic as I could with regard to the timing of my leave, in terms of both having something to write about and having enough time for what I write to appear in print before I submit my portfolio. I can only assume that Cathy and Diane were thinking the same way.

So, no teaching for 9 months, and minimal committee work. Now all I have to do is finish up two projects in January and one in March, write project reports from these, and then write journal pubs from the reports… continue one project and write two or three pubs from that… write one or two or three theory pieces that I’ve been saving for leave… maybe submit a grant proposal or two in there… Which brings me to my big plan for my leave: to stay home and write a lot.